Desert Radiance
by ncfan
Summary: -Nnoitra x Neliel- I begin to wonder why I came.


**Characters**: Neliel, Nnoitra**  
Summary**: I being to wonder why I came.**  
Pairings**: NnoiNel**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: Spoilers for Hueco Mundo arc**  
Timeline**: Pre-Hueco Mundo arc and Hueco Mundo arc**  
Author's Note**: The pairing fascinates me even if I don't like Nnoitra all that much.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

I loved him in my own way. It was not sexual desire—oh there certainly was on his end, and that was the whole problem. Rather, I knew I loved him because I cared at all whether he lived or died. He certainly gave no thought to his own life, so it was always me, always me who had to save him, get him out of those ridiculous messes he got himself into.

He always hated me for that.

Nnoitra exasperated me. He drove me half mad at times. Everything he did, he did to try to make me angry, to try and disturb my cool calm and make it clear that I was just as volatile and driven by my hungers as any of our kind.

I suppose… I suppose he wanted to prove that I was no better than he was, and so justify what he felt for me.

Every impossible feat he took on, he took to try to prove himself to me. I was not ignorant to these things; I had eyes, and I used them. I could see the hot desire in his eyes when he looked at me mixed in with all the sullen rage, so the two commingled and corrupted the other, and it disturbed me, I know it did.

_There's blood everywhere. My head's spinning as I lie against this rock and try so hard to keep my heavy eyes open._

Even though he was vying for my attention, he hated me for the concern I showed for him. He hated me when I rebuked him for doing things he knew were wrong. He hated me when I saved him.

Nnoitra always found reasons to despise me, to slake his own lust and justify the fact that his feelings were so confused. In him, the line between hatred and desire was deliberately blurred, until one was indistinguishable from the other.

He desired me. I did not like to state the obvious so I never acknowledged it to him. It was only the way he chose to express it that ever disgusted me.

_Blood fills the air._

_Is it mine?_

_No, it's not mine. I look down at my little hands and see it's not mine._

_Whose is it, then?_

_My bleary eyes wander, and I see a mass on the desert sands, the quaking flesh black with flowing blood._

_The sight of it is familiar to me._

I do not like to kill. That is what I always told him. I tried in vain to make him understand, that it would always stay with me no matter what I did and I could never scrub the stain away, but he did not understand, would not or could not listen.

Instead, I said _'I will not kill you'_ and all Nnoitra ever heard was _'You're too weak to defeat me.'_

Nnoitra chose to see that I saw him as a weak being, too weak to even chance measuring up to me. The fire of his hate burned even more brightly than it ever had before, as his lust became even more difficult to control in proportion.

He saw that I looked down on him.

And I realize now that I did.

I did look down on him.

That was the worst mistake I could ever have made, not to look down on Nnoitra, but to do so in such a way that he was _aware_ that I looked down on him.

I began to see my own death reflected in his eyes every time I looked at him.

_The scene's one I swear I've seen a dozen times. It's all familiar, overplayed, worn out. A plethora of clichés and trite occurrences._

_Am I really supposed to be sad at this?_

_I begin to wonder why I came back at all._

When the blow fell, I did not feel betrayed. Indeed, I had expected this from Nnoitra for months, years even. He was a creature of betrayal, wanted me under his domination or dead. If he couldn't have me then he'd kill me; I always knew that. I'll admit I was surprised; I thought I would be able to stop him when the time came for the betrayal.

As the fog began to fall in earnest and the veil descended, I supposed Nnoitra might be satisfied with just humiliating me, since he had gotten what he wanted. In attacking my Fracción, he had proved that I could get angry, that I was just the same as him.

I thought he would be content with degrading me, with dragging me down from my high place.

But when I woke up again, I wasn't Neliel anymore.

I was just Nel.

My brothers took me far from Las Noches, where I could be safe from Nnoitra and all of the scheming and corruption that saturated the fortress. We had never been like other Hollows. We fed on the souls of our brethren to survive but we were never bloodthirsty or cruel. Our survival on the wastes was a hard thing.

My life as simply Nel was short-lived. Unbeknownst to my brothers, I began to remember again.

It came in patchy sensations and disjointed dreams. I was never Nel again but I wasn't Neliel either. I couldn't go back to being her either, not unless something extraordinary were to come to pass.

My dreams disturbed me at first, but after a while I came to enjoy them, hunger for them and wait for them when I slept. I didn't know why I desired them so, only that I lived for these fantastical dreams where I was different.

The violent man in them always made me sad, though. I couldn't understand why. I felt that I should hate him, and didn't know why I thought that either, should hate him to the ends of time, but didn't, couldn't.

I began to remember, in earnest.

I shifted more from Nel to Neliel and back again depending on the day. I was Nel-Neliel, not either one, a creature with the child's body and the woman's mind. When I began to remember, really remember, who I had been, I looked hard and long on my brothers and said nothing.

Perhaps it was a cowardly act, but I was not capable of facing the torment these memories caused me.

And still, I worried for Nnoitra. Who would watch him, who would keep him safe, if I was not there to do so?

I should have hated him. I wish I could.

And now, I remember everything, resting against this rock, watching him die.

I remember everything.

_Nnoitra's dying. Nnoitra's dying at last._

_Something in me tells me I ought to get up and dance a jig over his grave, out to be screaming, whooping, hollering with joy that the one who wronged me is finally going to meet his reward, and if I were any sort of proper bloodthirsty Arrancar I'd be doing more than that. I'd be mutilating his corpse and feasting on his flesh._

_I think that if I ate him, Nnoitra would appreciate the sick irony of it. He always wanted to dominate me, but in the end it would be _me _who devoured _him.

_Instead, no hate's in me (Why, why can't I hate him?)._

_He's looking at me, the fighting light in his eyes starting to dim._

_And I am sad._

"_Nnoitra," I whisper. I want to say so much more but can't, am too tired, too weary, too close to unconsciousness and too disconsolate._

_I remember now._

_I came back for him._

_I came for Nnoitra._

_Even if he didn't want me._


End file.
